This is a memoir about Werris's life journey through the book world. Werris started by working for her local, indie bookstore and eventually moved into the male-dominated world of publishers' representatives. Certain aspects of this story were interesting, including the inner workings of book stores and the relationships between book buyers and publisher's reps. Other incidents described in the book, however, seemed to be included only as a way for Werris to drop in names of famous people she's met along the way. This was not a bad book, but there are better choices (Lewis Buzbee's The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop).

This is a memoir about Werris's life journey through the book world. Werris started by working for her local, indie bookstore and eventually moved into the male-dominated world of publishers' representatives. Certain aspects of this story were interesting, including the inner workings of book stores and the relationships between book buyers and publisher's reps. Other incidents described in the book, however, seemed to be included only as a way for Werris to drop in names of famous people she's met along the way. This was not a bad book, but there are better choices (Lewis Buzbee's The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop).

I'd never heard of Wendy Werris, but this woman writes like someone who's been doing it all her life. It must be all those books she's read, a kind of osmosis. Her life-long love affair with books is so obvious that I immediately recognized a kindred spirit. But this is not JUST about books; it is a finely nuanced and moving memoir of the first order. Werris's descriptions of her unorthodox Jewish home life, her father's show business connections and success - followed by a long slide into oblivion - are all so perfectly rendered you can feel the joys and sorrows. And she doesn't shrink from the more painful times either - her personal battles with drugs and alcohol, her brutal rape by a stranger, the long slow declines and deaths of her parents, and the sad dehumanizing changes in the book business which she bears witness to over more than thirty years. In her on-line blog, Ms. Werris notes she's currently working on a bio of her dad, Snag Werris, once a chief writer for Jackie Gleason. Write on, Wendy. I'll read it. - Tim Bazzett, author of the ReedCityBoy trilogy.

Anyone who has worked in a bookstore or in publishing will find much that resonates in this book, especially the sales reps. Her stories of initiation by fire struck a chord with this former rep; I'm glad I'm not the only one to once show up without a pen (makes it hard to write orders, it does). Werris couples this inside scoop on how books are sold with her tales of her father's show biz connections and the horrendous ordeal of her rape. It took Werris a long time to grow up but she seems on the right track now.